Press Room

The recent conviction of two Bahraini intelligence agents in the April 2011 beating death of a Shia businessman provides a welcome dose of justice in that troubled Gulf kingdom, PHR said today. But the seven-year sentences were very lenient, given the severity of the crime, and high-ranking officials who encouraged or condoned such behavior have still never been charged.

PHR calls on the Bahraini regime to set free immediately a human rights activist detained this month while monitoring the actions of Bahraini security forces during a peaceful public demonstration in Manama.

The Union level Peacemaking Committee and the Chin National Front met on Monday to discuss an agreement covering national integration, human rights and environmental conservation, military affairs, development of Chin State, and cooperation of the Union government. Earlier this year, Physicians for Human Rights announced findings from the first population-based survey to file human rights violations in all nine townships of Chin State.

In the first of a new series on academics who conduct research in extreme circumstances, Gillian Fowler recalls the six years she spent working as a forensic anthropologist exhuming mass graves in Guatemala. Fowler also mentions her consulting work for PHR in Kabul, Afghanistan, training a team of Afghans to carry out mass grave investigations.

As expected, the Obama administration today suspended the US ban on imports from Burma, just days before President Obama’s historic visit to that country. Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) is disappointed that the decision was not coupled to a requirement for proper safeguards to protect human rights.